Freud family

Freud family portrait, 1876. Standing left to right: Paula, Anna, Sigmund, Emmanuel, Rosa and Marie Freud and their cousin Simon Nathanson. Seated: Adolfine, Amalia, Alexander and Jacob Freud. The other boy and girl are unidentified.

The family of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, lived in Austria and Germany until the 1930s before emigrating to England, Canada and the United States. Several of Freud's descendants have become well known in different fields.

Julius Freud died in infancy. Anna married Ely Bernays (1860–1921), the elder brother of Sigmund's wife Martha. There were four daughters: Judith (b. 1885), Lucy (b. 1886), Hella (b. 1893), Martha (b. 1894) and one son, Edward (1891–1995). In 1892 the family moved to the United States where Edward Bernays became a major influence in modern public relations.

Rosa (Regina Deborah Graf-Freud) married a doctor, Heinrich Graf (1852–1908). Their son, Hermann (1897-1917) was killed in the First World War; their daughter, Cacilie (1899-1922), committed suicide after an unhappy love affair.

Mitzi (Maria Moritz-Freud) married her cousin Moritz Freud (1857–1922). There were three daughters: Margarethe (b. 1887), Lily (b. 1888), Martha (1892-1930) and one son, Theodor (b. 1904) who died in a drowning accident aged 23. Martha, who was known as Tom and dressed as a man, worked as a children’s book illustrator. After the suicide of her husband, Jakob Seidman, a journalist, she took her own life.[4] Lily became an actress and in 1917 married the actor Arnold Marlé.[5]

Dolfi (Esther Adolfine Freud) did not marry and remained in the family home to care for her parents.

Pauli (Pauline Regine Winternitz-Freud) married Valentine Winternitz (1859–1900) and emigrated to the United States where their daughter Rose Beatrice was born in 1896. After the death of her husband she and her daughter returned to Europe.[6]

Alexander Freud married Sophie Sabine Schreiber (b. 1878). Their son, Harry, born in 1909, emigrated to the United States and died in 1968.[7]

Both Freud’s half-brothers emigrated to Manchester, England, shortly before the rest of the Freud family moved from Leipzig to Vienna in 1860.

Emanuel and Marie Freud (1836–1923) married in Freiberg where their first two children were born: John (b. 1856, disappeared pre-1919), the "inseparable playmate" of Freud’s early childhood;[8] and Pauline (1855–1944). Two children were born in Manchester: Bertha (1866–1940) and Samuel (1870–1945). Freud kept in touch with his British relatives through a regular correspondence with Samuel. They would eventually meet for the first time in London in 1938.[9]

The systematic persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany and the ensuing Holocaust had a profound effect on the family. Four of Freud's five sisters died in concentration camps: Rosa in Auschwitz, Mitzi in Theresienstadt, Dolfi and Paula in Treblinka.[10] Freud's brother, Alexander, escaped with his family to Switzerland shortly before the Anschluss and they subsequently emigrated to Canada. Freud's sons Oliver, a civil engineer, and Ernst Ludwig, an architect, lived and worked in Berlin until Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 after which they fled with their families to France and London respectively. Oliver Freud and his wife later emigrated to the United States. Their daughter, Eva, remained in France with her fiance where she died of influenza in 1944.

Freud and his remaining family left Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938 after Ernest Jones, the then President of the International Psychoanalytic Association, secured immigration permits for them to move to Britain. Permits were also secured for Freud’s housekeeper and maid, his doctor, Max Schur and his family, as well as a number of Freud's colleagues and their families. Freud's grandson, Ernst Halberstadt, was the first to leave Vienna, initially for Paris, before going on to London where after the war he would adopt the name Ernest Freud and train as a psychoanalyst. Next to leave for Paris were Ernestine, Sophie and Walter Freud, the wife and children of Freud's eldest son, Martin. Walter joined his father in London. His mother and sister remained in France and subsequently emigrated to the United States. His maternal grandmother, Ida Drucker, was deported from Biarritz in 1942 and died in Auschwitz.[11] Freud’s sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, was the first to leave for London early in May 1938. She was followed by his son, Martin, on 14 May and then his daughter Mathilde and her husband, Robert Hollitscher, on 24 May. Freud, his wife and daughter, Anna, left Vienna on 4 June, accompanied by their household staff and a doctor. Their arrival at Victoria Station, London on 6 June attracted widespread press coverage.[12] Freud’s Vienna consulting room was replicated in faithful detail in the new family home, 20 Maresfield Gardens in Hampstead, North London.

Martin and Walter Freud were both interned in 1940 as enemy aliens. Following a change in government policy on internment, both were subsequently recruited to the Pioneer Corps. After the war, denied recognition as a (Vienna trained) lawyer by the British legal profession, Martin Freud ran a tobacconist’s in Bloomsbury.[13] Walter was deported to an internment camp in New South Wales, Australia. On his return to England in 1941 he was recruited to the Pioneer Corps and subsequently to the SOE. In April 1945 he was parachuted behind enemy lines in Austria. Advised to change his name in case of capture, he refused, declaring : “I want the Germans to know a Freud is coming back”. He narrowly survived separation from his comrades and took the leading role in securing the surrender of the strategically important Zeltweg aerodrome in southern Austria.[14] When the war ended he was assigned to war crimes investigation work in Germany. The fate of his great aunts and maternal grandmother at the hands of the Nazis meant he was particularly pleased to help secure the prosecution of directors of the firm that supplied Zyklon B gas to the concentration camps, two of whom were executed for war crimes. In 1946 he left the army with the rank of major. The following year he was he was granted British citizenship and resumed his career as an industrial chemist.[15] Retribution for the murder of his great aunts was also a concern for Alexander Freud’s son Harry. He arrived in post-war Vienna as a US army officer to investigate the circumstances of their deportation and helped track down and bring before the courts Anton Sauerwald, the Nazi appointed official charged with the supervision of the Freuds’ assets. Sauerwald gained early release from prison in 1947 when Anna Freud intervened on his behalf, revealing that he had "used his office as our appointed commissar in such a manner as to protect my father".[16]

Sigmund Freud married Martha Bernays (1861–1951) in 1886. Martha was the daughter of Berman Bernays (1826–1879) and Emmeline Philipp (1830–1910). Her grandfather, Isaac Bernays (1792–1849), was a Chief Rabbi of Hamburg. Her sister, Minna Bernays (1865-1941), became a permanent member of the Freud household after the death of her fiancé in 1895.

Sigmund and Martha Freud had six children and eight grandchildren:[17]

Mathilde Freud (1887–1978) married Robert Hollitscher (1875–1959), and had no children

Jean-Martin Freud (1889–1967, known as Martin Freud) married Esti Drucker (1896–1980), and had 2 children: